August 29, 2011

Looking back - Sunday Sessions

Different spin on the Entendre

A couple of Sunday sessions have been missed due to one thing or another with busy Mondays & Tuesdays.

Sunday morning has been and remains my favourite training session. During the week its usually frantic trying to squeeze in sessions between childminders, work, house work, organising races etc. Sunday's are easy days, up early and out for a long easy spin or run 3 - 4 hours and still be back in time for lunch and playtime with the family or work if necessary.Some of my best training sessions have been achieved on Sundays. By a long shot, training on the bike with Conor through the Summer has made a big difference to where I'm at right now with my bike. Thanks Chief! Mostly we have done the Burren with some hills taken in, all done at a modest pace but still with effort.

Just last weekend we did our first long run together, a feature which will be more prominent in the weeks to come after G70.3 as we head towards Dublin Marathon in the Autumn. In fairness I have not done a long run (over 12-15k) since my Rock & Road Half Marathon in March.

We did a 20k (on the button) on a hilly route (Training File) around Conor's home in just under 2 hours. It was a nice casual pace and both of us felt pretty comfortable on a 'dry' run. By dry I mean no gels or water, pretty much a tester of a run, to see where our bodies were in relation to nutrition.

Another good recent Sunday Session was just gone with Rick, who made the trip over to suit my plans with babysitters etc. Thanks for that!

We set out with a plan to do an easy spin followed by a run. We reckoned half distance was enough for both disciplines. Rick was trying out his nutrition plans so we had a little pow-wow before hand. I think he was cogging my plan which is cogged from Optimum Nutrition, that's how the merry go-round goes round.

The bike route (Map & Training File)we choose was flat, simply to replicate the 90k route we'll be doing and to try the pacing of the grub. I was happy enough with my plans and have tested most of it previously so I did this session without nutrition per se, simply an electrolyte drink, water and ride shots as back up. My calibration is slightly out as we did 55k, something I need to check and adjust before the weekend or I could be short in my plans!

Off the bike we took a couple of minutes to replicate transition and off we went on our 10k run. I did toy with the idea of sneaking it out as a 20k run but that wouldn't have been fair so we kept it to a simple run loop (Map & Training File).

Tiredness has been a big impediment to my training over the past two weeks, but we're nearly there. I'm ready and able for this.